Baggage

There are nearly 2million people in the UK alone disabled by Covid. It's been the largest mass disabling event I have ever lived through in this country, and yet people still aren't seeing that for what it is.

Oooh interesting thing! Lovely #WELS colleagues have put together a hub and toolkit for supporting #neurodivergent #children #neurospicy www.open.ac.uk/courses/choo...

NHS closed Tavistock over care complaints – there were only eight An eye-opening FOI report has revealed that just eight people complained about the Tavistock gender clinic's care provision in 10 years.

The entire British media fabricated a "scandal" at Tavistock and there were only 8 complaints over an entire decade. Yet the most actual common issues were about access to care and waiting lists.

www.thepinknews.com/2026/02/11/n...

A cave opening shaped a little like a face, the stone is orangey brown, There are two lighting units silhouetted which look like eyes, and the cave opening itself looks like a mouth.

Cave mouth

Image of a person stuck inside a huge box I have long Covid. Don’t call my chronic disease a ‘journey’: I would sooner call the experience a bad trip Like an estimated 20 million Americans, I have an incurable post-acute infection syndrome that goes by the name of long Covid. Some people refer to the long Covid experience as a “journey.” I wish they would stop. I’m pinned down by it, stuck with it. I feel like I’m getting nowhere. Sugarcoating my bitter pill, a chronic disease, by calling it a “journey” might sweeten it for you, but not for me. Read more here>>

"I have long Covid. Don’t call my chronic disease a ‘journey’: I would sooner call the experience a bad trip"

Screenshot from February 2026 AMMES newsletter

www.statnews.com/2025/11/25/c...

#chronicillness #LongCovid #hiddenillness #invisibleillness
#Spoonies #Spoonie #ChronicallyIll #MEcfs

I don't use them either. I don't miss it at all.

2023- 1 in 5 Doctors had long covid.
1 in 4 nurses also have long covid.
We will end up at a tipping point without action, with gaps throughout the labour force and at that point it will be very hard to turn things around. www.bma.org.uk/media/7318/b...

Managing Data & Storage location All paid customers (including Pro) will be able to choose the storage location for some of their data

Not that it negates your point, but there is an option in Zoom to have at least some of your data held and processed in various countries some of which are not hostile authoritarian states. As long as you trust it to do that if you click that option of course.
support.zoom.com/hc/en/articl...

A portion of a silver plaque on stone, the text is in Icelandic and English. The English reads The Black Cone, Monument to Civil Disobedience "When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and and the most indispensible of duties." Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 1793

Civil Disobedience

Sometimes you just need a basket full of baby otters to make your day complete. Oh, look what I found! You can thank me later....

This. And the oppressive and unsupportive organisations which should help you.

Sorry to hear that, sounds horrendous.

A street painting of cartoon flowers on a hot pink panel, text in beige reads "Amongst the Doom and Gloom we must continue to Bloom"

Continue to Bloom

Amazon's Ring to partner with Flock, a network of AI cameras used by ICE, feds, and police | TechCrunch Agencies that use Flock can request that Ring doorbell users share footage to help with "evidence collection and investigative work."

It was inevitable.

So sorry to hear that Thom.

A pale blue sky with two vapour trails at diagonal angles, a tiny crescent moon is just visible at the end of one of them. At the bottom of the image in the middle is the top of a tv aerial, on an opposing diagonal to the trails.

Watch the skies

Yalom talks about the concept in Staring at the Sun, which is an excellent book about facing death.

Do you mean Irvin Yalom or Terry Pratchett, or someone else? Quite a lot of people have talked about that.

A mossy bank with three fern leaves and a strand of ivy growing on it.

Nice Calming Green

Post-translational modifications within fibrinaloid microclot complexes distinguish Pre-COVID-19 Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, Long COVID, and Long COVID-POTS and reveal disease-specific molecular pathways — Renata Madre Booyens et al. "PTM profiling reveals distinct yet overlapping biochemical signatures invisible to standard blood tests" "Long COVID exhibits pro-coagulant fibrinogen modifications with metabolic dysregulation. PC-POTS and LC-POTS shows predominantly immune-oxidative disruptions"

Post-translational modifications within fibrinaloid microclot complexes distinguish Pre-COVID-19 POTS, #LongCOVID, & Long COVID-POTS & reveal disease-specific molecular pathways by @resiapretorius.bsky.social et al.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Screenshot from Science for ME update

#POTS

Autistic people are the most empathic, fair and generous people I know. And Simon Baron Cohen's earlier studies are very poorly designed. Fight me.

A scruffy wall covered in patchwork of grey and white paint, with "Love is Everywhere" written in black spray paint.

Love is Everywhere

Have you read the book?

Fear the Dead is written large in capital letters in black marker across four panels of the outside of a window. The window has white frames and turquoise boards inside the glass.

Fear the Dead

Those who know me on Facebook, I have lost my account there. Gone completely.

Any pointers welcome, I can't find the form to appeal it.

The bottom half of the picture shows a brick wall painted with a large hulking turquoise robot in profile and a chain from the robot to the edge of the wall. The robot is looking up at the blue sky above, it has a large open jaw, and an angry expression.

Let's break our chains

Two blue front doors, the left one is plain light blue. The right one is painted like the Tardis from Doctor Who.

There are two doors to go through

Detail from a map of the A23a iceberg's progress since being calved in 1986; after 30 years stuck on the seafloor it made rapid progress in 2022-2023 but rotated on a water column for 8 months and has now run aground off South Georgia. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20d1xp6046o

typical book project timeline